


Mirnyy Atom

by AXEe



Category: Original Work
Genre: 1980s, Alternate History, Cold War, Gen, Soviet Union, Superheroes, United States
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26869327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AXEe/pseuds/AXEe
Summary: The title translates as 'Peaceful Atom', which was a term used in the Soviet Union to promote nuclear power, as it was believed in the USSR that nuclear power was safer than other sources.   Of course that all went out the window when the Chernobyl disaster happened.    'Kuzma's mother' is a Russian idiom to 'show someone Kuzma's mother' means to 'teach someone a lesson'.   It became famous when Nikita Khrushchev used it at the United Nations during his famous shoe-banging incident as well as the phrase 'we will bury you' (he wasn't big on subtlety it seems).  Kuzma's mother was also used by the Soviet Union as a codename for their 'Tsar Bomba', the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, it was detonated on October 30th 1961 and had an estimated yield of 50 megatons of TNT and the mushroom cloud produced by the bomb was measured at forty-two (42) miles high (67 km), which is over seven times the height of Mount Everest, making it the biggest nuke ever detonated.   Fortunately it never went into mass production and it was mostly used by the Soviets just to show that if they wanted to they could build a bomb that powerful.Midwich is a reference to The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham, the book has been adapted into various over the years, most notbly the film "Village of the Damned" in 1960 and 1995.Kuybyshev is the name of several places in Russia and the former Soviet Union, althought as best as I could find out there isn't a place in Siberia of that name (I could be wrong)MK-Ultra was a real program of the CIA that operated during the Cold War, but their focus in the real world was improving interrogation techniques, most famously MK-Ultra agents drugged unsuspecting American citizens with LSD and other mind-altering substances to see how they would affect a person, as well as using hypnosis, electroshock, verbal sexual abuse, sensory deprivation, and torture.   When the program was exposed in 1975, it was discovered that most of the files had been shredded under the orders of then-CIA director Richard Helm, however in 1977 a Freedom of Information Act request led to 20,000 documents realting to MK Ultra being uncovered, which led to a series of Senate hearings that year, and in December 2018, declassified documents revealed a letter written by an unknown doctor which claimed that they had been capble of making dogs run, walk, turn, and stop using implants surgically implanted into the brain.Poor dogs! :=(
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Mirnyy Atom

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Atom--Soviet Superwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23520124) by [AXEe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AXEe/pseuds/AXEe). 



******

**1947:** As the world rebuilds from the horrors of World War II, and the battle lines of the Cold War are being drawn, the Soviet Union—eager to prove it’s superiority over the United States—begins intense study of various documentation captured from the Nazis at the end of the war. Finding one unique paper detailing a Nazi program to create a type of ‘super-weapon’, Soviet scientists began an attempt to replicate it. The project is codenamed **Kuzma's mother** and the term **Kuzma** is soon used to refer to an associated projects.

The effort takes close to thirteen years and results in numerous failures and missteps, but in the end they succeed.

 **April 12th, 1961:** Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human being to fly into space.

 **October 30th 1961:** On the heels of their accomplishment in sending the first human being into space, the Soviets triumphantly announce to the world at large that, after thirteen years, they have created a superpowered individual they simply call **The Atom**. Taking the form of a young woman about twenty years in age, this figure possesses the powers of flight, incredible strength and speed, is nigh invulnerable to most forms of weaponry, and can produce bursts of highly destructive energy.

She is described by Soviet state propaganda as fighting for _‘socialism, the workers of the world, and the expansion of the Warsaw Pact’_ , further adding rather ominously that _‘there is only one superpower now’_.

In the United States, following the Soviet Union’s announcement, the White House publicly announces the intention of the United States government to respond in kind to this threat, privately however, the government declares that the nuclear bomb—the weapon that won the war and defeated Japan—to be _‘obsolete’_ , and top officials also admit that they have no idea how to replicate the Soviets’ accomplishment.

 **1961—62:** The CIA begins to aggressively recruit defectors in the Eastern Bloc, often using less-than legal or morally-acceptable methods, in order to gain any information relating to the creation of The Atom. In mid-1962, a defector crosses into West Berlin holding a critical document; copies of the diary pages of the scientist who created The Atom.

Through these fragmented, hastily copied texts, the U.S. government learns that The Atom is not, as previously thought, a ‘super-soldier’ but is instead a totally artificial lifeform, having been ‘born’ from a test tube and raised in a laboratory. With access to this information, fragmented as it is, the CIA and various laboratories around the country form a group known as **MK-Ultra** and begin to try and copy the Soviet efforts. Their initial efforts are imperfect imitations, but they continue.

Meanwhile The Atom begins to show a distinct compassionate streak, which is fostered by the chief scientist involved in her creation whom she clearly views as a father figure, rescuing people from disaster regardless of political ideology and even shows a sense of independence, refusing a direct order to interfere in the ongoing-Vietnam War out of concern that her presence will only worsen the death toll. Her Soviet handlers, although outraged by her clear defiance, reluctantly agree, having already drawn international scrutiny for creating the Atom in the first place. The USSR later publicly announces that it will vow to not use the Atom—or any other superhumans—in Vietnam, a pledge which the United States also vows.

 **1963:** The United States’ first attempt at creating their own superhuman—codenamed **ACE** (for ‘ace in the hole’)—gains consciousness. Possessing only basic, animal-level instincts (later estimated to be somewhat below that of the average dog), the creature is secretly airdropped into Vietnam by the CIA—in violation of the previous treaty banning the use of superhumans in warfare—in an attempt to route Viet Cong forces and secure an American victory.

The attempt is an unmitigated disaster, as ACE—seemingly unable to differentiate between friend and foe—goes on a destructive rampage in the Mekong Delta, massacring both American and VC troops before heading in the direction of Saigon. However before ACE can reach the South Vietnamese capital, The Atom arrives and, with support from both American and Viet Cong troops, fights the creature in a vicious, running duel that finally ends with the creature’s death less than half a mile from the city limits.

In the wake of this disaster, the United Nations Security Council drafts and passes the **Super-Human Test Ban Treaty**. Due to the overwhelming international pressure, the United States reluctantly signs the treaty. The President at the time, Democrat Terrance Greystone, is later found guilty of conspiracy for keeping the Congress in the dark about the existence of ACE and is impeached months later. The CIA agents behind MK-Ultra meanwhile disappear, and many of the records of their existence are destroyed.

The United Nations also pushes for an end to the war in Vietnam, and with the devastation caused by ACE, both sides agree. Two months later, the two independent nations of South and North Vietnam are created. Unlike North and South Korea however, both sides agree to a mutually beneficial peace treaty that results in a free and open border policy between the two sides, and both later open full diplomatic relations with the United States

In the wake of ACE’s devastation, The Atom remains in Vietnam for several weeks helping to rebuild from both the destruction caused by ACE and from the war itself, an act that begins to earn her respect from both the American public and the world at large. However, the actions of ACE lead to a new term being coined to describe The Atom and other creations like her: rather than being called ‘superhumans’ as before, The Atom and ACE are reclassified as **living weapon of mass destruction** or **LWMD** , and in the wake of the destructive rampage of ACE, many other nations—some aligned with the Soviet Union, some aligned with the United States—that cannot replicate the creation of The Atom or ACE, frantically begin their own nuclear weapons programs.

With the apparent failure of the U.S's LWMD project, the American government turns its attention to loftier goals. Newly-elected President John F Kennedy publicly announces the nation’s intention to land a man on the moon and safely return him to Earth by the end of the decade.

 **November 22nd 1963:** An LWMD of unknown origin attacks President Kennedy while he’s traveling in the Presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Although wounded, the President, his wife, and Texas Governor John Connally, all survive due in part to the timely intervention of The Atom, who fights the creature to a standstill, however before the creature can be taken into custody it appears to self-destruct.

Following his near-assassination, President Kennedy renews his pledge to land a man on the moon, the Soviet Union also vows to do the same. The Space Race has begun. However the actions of The Atom in saving the life of an American President as well as helping in the rebuilding of Dallas have thawed relations between the two nations considerably, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev later publicly agrees to a joint Soviet-U.S manned moon landing.

Meanwhile, analysis of the remains of the LWMD that attacked President Kennedy by an international team of scientists reveal that it is similar in composition to ACE, but the remains are too degraded to identify which country made it, and the Soviet Union vehemently denies having been responsible for the creature’s creation, later revealing that The Atom is their only surviving LWMD to reach maturity.

 **1964:** As the new year dawns and both the U.S. and the Soviet Union prepare for the joint moon landing, a series of strange events begin to occur worldwide. While most are merely tabloid fodder or misunderstandings of rare but natural phenomena, some are indeed real. In Pennsylvania, a diner full of patrons all suddenly collapse dead from simultaneous brain hemorrhages, the press is told that the mass deaths was the result of an untreated gas leak.

One month later the pipes at a bar in Mexico City burst, an investigation reveals that all the pipes burst at the same time as if ‘something’ tried to escape from them. Two months later in the United Kingdom, in the small village of Midwich, Winshire, a two mile wide circular distortion suddenly surrounds the village. Although not visible with the naked eye, anyone who attempts to enter the village or the surrounding two miles (3.2 kilometers) suddenly vanishes. Aerial photography of the village shows only a silvery ‘blob’ of the community and the surrounding two miles when developed. The distortion remains in place for twenty-four hours before vanishing. When the British military enters the village following the distortion’s disappearance they find all eighty residents and any accompanying animals missing, and all plant life in the area dead or dying.

Although most of these strange events are covered up or dismissed a rumor and wild speculation, the governments of both the United States and the Soviet Union take notice and, in keeping with the new spirit of cooperation, begin a joint investigation, suspecting that the same person or persons unknown who unleashed the LWMD in Dallas to be responsible.

At the same time as the incident in Midwich, residents of the small community of Kuybyshev in Siberia fall into a mass state of catatonia. When they awake, every person is visibly traumatized, and rants about how a ‘devil’ appeared in the middle of the town and put the entire village to sleep, plaguing them with horrible nightmares before they all awoke simultaneously.

Despite an exhaustive search by Soviet authorities, they can find no evidence of an LWMD, and the incident is largely dismissed by the government as the result of some kind of strange, yet natural, phenomena, possibly a gas leak from a nearby abandoned mine. However, privately, the Soviet government is concerned as the incident occurs only a few miles from the base of operations for The Atom. Security at Kuybyshev is increased.

 **May, 1964:** FBI agents arrest several members of a doomsday cult in Oregon. While most of the cult’s members either refuse to cooperate or refuse to speak without an attorney present, one member reveals a stack of documents that supposedly show that these strange occurrences are the work of an individual or organization known as **CHARON**.

Although understandably skeptical, an investigation uncovers that ‘Operation: Charon’ was also the name of the CIA operation that resulted in the LWMD ACE being dropped into Vietnam two years previously, hinting at a possible connection.

 **November:** During the 1964 election, the United States elects its first female President, Octavia Marsden. One of President Marsden’s first acts as President is to sign the Voting Rights Act into law. Under this law, it becomes illegal in the United States to discriminate against a person based upon gender, race, or religion.

 **1965:** As both the U.S. and the Soviet Union continue to plan for the eventual moon landing, it becomes clear that, although both nations are not in competition with one another, they are also still working independently of one another. Fearful of falling behind, the Soviet Union creates its own dedicated space agency, Soyuzcosmos, in order to keep up with NASA’s accomplishments.

In addition, the Soviet government is still considering who should be the first cosmonaut to set foot on the moon. Some suggest The Atom as it would be a duel accomplishment for Soviet science, but this idea is quickly dismissed as the potential of The Atom being injured or killed in the unknown of space is too great.

 **1966:** The residents of Midwich, having suddenly and mysteriously disappeared two years previously, begin to suddenly and randomly reappear one by one in various places throughout the globe with no memories of the time between their disappearance and their reappearance. Even stranger, although the victims appear to possess all the memories of the villagers of Midwich up the moment of their disappearance, their dental records, fingerprints, and general physical appearance do not match that of any of the known residents of Midwich, with some of the claimed residents being of a different ethnicity or gender than that of the person they claim to be. Furthermore, they also claim that the village’s population was much higher than officially recorded, claiming that its population was much higher than the known figure of eighty.

When pressed to explain this discrepancy, the residents cannot offer any satisfactory explanation and seemed just as confused and puzzled by the discrepancy as the investigators. At the same time that the villagers of Midwich began to reappear, the villagers of Kuybyshev, Siberia begin to disappear; a pattern quickly emerges; for every one Midwich villager that reappears, a villager of opposite age or gender disappears.

In response to this sudden resurgence in strange occurrences, both the U.S. and Soviet Union—realizing that the threat that Charon poses is far greater than the nuclear bomb or The Atom and other known LWMDs—agree to work together to investigate and, if possible, stop Charon.

With silent support from the United Nations Security Council, both nations form the **Charitable Cultural Exchange Trust** more commonly referred to simply as **the Trust**.

Officially, the Trust is a charity that supports peaceful cultural exchange between the U.S and the USSR, unofficially however it is a top-secret international agency that recruits agents from both nations to investigate and stop any strange occurrences around the world that may be linked to Charon. One of its top ‘assists’ is The Atom herself and the organization’s unofficial headquarters is in Kuybyshev, Siberia in The Atom’s base of operations.

 **1967—68:** The Trust expands to include agents from the United Kingdom and most United Nations member-states. Meanwhile, the known returned Midwich victims began to exhibit strange powers and seem compelled against their will to commit various crimes or other nefarious acts, many seem compelled to fight The Atom, and the Trust scrambles to cover up these encounters.

 **July 16th, 1969:** After many false starts, NASA launches its first manned mission to the moon, Apollo 11. In the Soviet Union, the Soviets’ own manned moon mission, ZOND (Russian for ‘probe’) is launched as well. Owing to the differences in design principles, both nations launch separate craft simultaneously.

The two craft trail one another to the moon. Four days later, on July 20th, the Apollo 11 lander, _Eagle_ sets down in the Sea of Tranquility. Fifteen minutes later, the Soviet lunar lander lands nearby. Astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong and cosmonaut Alexi Arkhipovich Leonov become the first humans to set foot on the lunar surface.

After a total of twenty-one hours and thirty-six minutes on the lunar surface, all three men return to their orbiting command modules. Furthering the growing spirit of cooperation between the two nations, Leonov travels back to Earth aboard Columbia with Aldrin, while Armstrong returns to Earth aboard the Soviet command module.

Four days later, both crews safety return to Earth, Armstrong and his Soviet counterpart landing in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, and Aldrin and Leonov safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, where they’re quickly picked up the American aircraft carrier _U.S.S. Hornet_.

After time spent in quarantine, both Armstrong and Leonov return home to their respective countries, but during their time in quarantine, both men immersed themselves in the cultures of the other’s country, and later help to foster greater relations between the two nations, with Armstrong later recalling being drawn into several philosophical debates with The Atom herself over the differences and similarities of both communism and democracy.

However, amid the massive global celebrations, the three men privately reveal to their respective governments that they found clear evidence that someone else had been to the moon before them, recounting seeing footprints and what appeared to be the descent stage of a lander of some sort.

 **1970—72:** Following the successful Moon landing, NASA and the Soyuzcosmos launch several more manned missions to the moon, partly to continue scientific study of the moon, but also to investigate the other moon landing first seen by the Apollo 11 astronauts. While NASA officially ends the Apollo program in 1972 with Apollo 17, both the U.S. and USSR—through the aegis of the Trust—continue several more unofficial manned missions to the moon throughout the rest of the decade, culminating in the construction of **Hera Base** , a top-secret moon base built in the shadow of a large crater. Staffed 24/7 by a rotating crew of six, the base’s purpose is to monitor for any strange or unusual events occurring on Earth.

 **1980 (the present):** The last known resident of Kuybyshev, Siberia disappears. One day later, another claimed resident of Midwich appears in Moscow…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title translates as 'Peaceful Atom', which was a term used in the Soviet Union to promote nuclear power, as it was believed in the USSR that nuclear power was safer than other sources. Of course that all went out the window when the Chernobyl disaster happened. 'Kuzma's mother' is a Russian idiom to 'show someone Kuzma's mother' means to 'teach someone a lesson'. It became famous when Nikita Khrushchev used it at the United Nations during his famous shoe-banging incident as well as the phrase 'we will bury you' (he wasn't big on subtlety it seems). Kuzma's mother was also used by the Soviet Union as a codename for their 'Tsar Bomba', the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, it was detonated on October 30th 1961 and had an estimated yield of 50 megatons of TNT and the mushroom cloud produced by the bomb was measured at forty-two (42) miles high (67 km), which is over seven times the height of Mount Everest, making it the biggest nuke ever detonated. Fortunately it never went into mass production and it was mostly used by the Soviets just to show that if they wanted to they could build a bomb that powerful.
> 
> Midwich is a reference to The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham, the book has been adapted into various over the years, most notbly the film "Village of the Damned" in 1960 and 1995.
> 
> Kuybyshev is the name of several places in Russia and the former Soviet Union, althought as best as I could find out there isn't a place in Siberia of that name (I could be wrong)
> 
> MK-Ultra was a real program of the CIA that operated during the Cold War, but their focus in the real world was improving interrogation techniques, most famously MK-Ultra agents drugged unsuspecting American citizens with LSD and other mind-altering substances to see how they would affect a person, as well as using hypnosis, electroshock, verbal sexual abuse, sensory deprivation, and torture. When the program was exposed in 1975, it was discovered that most of the files had been shredded under the orders of then-CIA director Richard Helm, however in 1977 a Freedom of Information Act request led to 20,000 documents realting to MK Ultra being uncovered, which led to a series of Senate hearings that year, and in December 2018, declassified documents revealed a letter written by an unknown doctor which claimed that they had been capble of making dogs run, walk, turn, and stop using implants surgically implanted into the brain.
> 
> Poor dogs! :=(

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought :=)


End file.
